The Horse You Rode In On (A Halo: The Master Chief Collection Story) – IGN First

Replaying classic games – and yes, Halo now counts – can be both a wonderful reminder and a disappointing eye-opener. Most of the great stuff is still great, but technical seams can worsen with age. With the new updates to Halo 1, 2, 3, and 4 in The Master Chief Collection (let’s shorten that to MCC), you get nostalgia with none of the side effects. You can have the Halo experience you had two consoles ago, without the wrinkles.

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...You get nostalgia with none of the side effects.

Purists will want more Halo as they remember it, and they’ll get it. And when Bungie and 343 got so much so, so right, who can blame them?

But there’s a funny thing about us and our memories – we’re forgiving with them, and forgetful. Thirteen years of distance can’t weaken the iconic hums of Halo: Combat Evolved’s menu music, nor can a decade make you forget how you felt when you scored that last amazing flag capture on Coagulation. But you’ve probably forgotten about everyone’s blocky mouths, the flat textures on walls and floors, and the toothless explosions. It was all fine at the time, anyway.

That’s not to point out failures on Bungie’s part. Expecting a game’s sights and sounds to hold up after two console generations of technological advancements is beyond unfair. Still, times have changed. The bar is higher. These lesser “faults” won’t (and can’t) kill what makes Halo so special, but they are small and constant reminders that Master Chief has gotten older. They make it more difficult to believe in an otherwise incredible and convincing world.

So 343 hunted them down like targets of a kill order, with zero collateral damage.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection

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They left the timeless stuff alone – the feel of combat, the writing, the otherness of the gargantuan ring world. Those things are invincible anyway. But if there’s something you can see or hear, it probably looks or sounds better in a big way.

343’s artists, programmers, and testers didn’t just handle Halo’s assets – the lines of code, the geometry of worlds and characters. They handled, with great care, a huge piece of gaming history that still plays terrifically in a post-aim-down-sight world. The Chief was never really gone; he was just in cryosleep. And now it’s time for John to wake up.

Once More, With Feeling

The earliest levels of Halo were brilliantly deceptive. The Pillar of Autumn, a massive human vessel, is under attack from overwhelming Covenant forces. You’re woken up to evacuate a precious AI before she falls into enemy hands. There’s a huge ring floating outside in space, and nobody knows what the heck it is. Once you grab a gun (you’ll have to find ammo as you go), Pillar of Autumn becomes, essentially, a bunch of hallways that connect larger combat “arenas.” It feels like a corridor shooter with a better premise and shooting mechanics than most. You evacuate the doomed ship with your package. It’s sincerely very fun. Well done. Time for level two.

Oh man, level two. “Halo.”

Halo is surreal. There’s enough of both the foreign and the familiar to keep you on edge. You see grass and trees. A waterfall hisses in the distance. Admire the sights enough and you’ll catch a glimpse of the impossible horizon. The world’s surface curves skyward, so you follow it up, around, and back down, tracing it with your weapon’s reticle. How big is this thing? How does gravity work here? An unfamiliar hum steals your attention, and you see something flying toward you. It looks vaguely like a tuning fork. You don’t know what it is; you do know that you need to run and hide.

It’s one of the most excellent, purposefully disorienting moments in games. The environment asks you questions you genuine can’t answer, and just as you’re getting your bearings, you’re snapped back to attention with a visceral threat. It captivated my 13-year-old mind.

I’ll never have that exact moment again, but people playing Halo for the first time with MCC’s improved look can. The same goes for finding Jenkins’ helmet, or any of the other countless excellent Halo moments.

That signature Halo “feel” went mostly untouched. If anything, the frame rate bump (up to 60fps) makes it a bit easier to line up headshots or take out flying enemies, like Banshees or Drones. Encounters feel like miniature sandboxes with plenty of options. Hanging back is okay. Running in is okay. Finding a vantage point is okay. The sacred Halo trinity of guns, grenades, and melee attacks, all accessible with one button, worked in the early 2000s, and it still works now.

Exit Theatre Mode

At any time in Halo or Halo 2’s campaigns, you can hit a button and revert back to the original game’s graphics. 2011’s Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary had a similar feature, but it took a few seconds. The switch on Xbox One is instantaneous. If you played the original, the swap button becomes the oh-wow-I-can’t-believe-this-is-how-Halo-used-to-look button. If you haven’t played the original, it becomes a portal to a stranger, blockier world you never knew and don’t need to know to enjoy the game. MCC makes plenty of room for all of us.

Halo 2, Round Two

Do you remember that first big Halo 2 trailer? The one where Chief leaps out of a ship to give the Covenant their bomb back? When we visited 343 for IGN First, the first things we saw were some of the brand new cut scenes Blur created – including snippets of that famous trailer. What’s old was new again, and I had goosebumps like it was the first time.

It’s strange seeing cutscenes from 2004 outclass most modern cinematics, but that’s what Blur does (fun fact: they also did the cutscenes for Halo Wars and Halo 4). Sergeant Johnson bellows out orders and tough love with incredible fidelity. Watching the Chief take down a Scarab tank and stroll out of the wreckage is as epic as ever. Arbiter’s mandibles twist and twitch. With around one hour of redone cutscenes, I’m tempted to jump into Halo 2 immediately just to see them in their entirety.

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All four campaigns have received some work, but Halo 2 is the marquee title in MCC. It looks great, feels better than ever at 1080p and 60 FPS, and the iconic soundtrack was re-recorded with the San Francisco symphony, a 40-person opera choir, and a 28-person boys choir. It’s madness to imagine improving Marty O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori’s original score, but it may be about to happen. Swapping back and forth between the new and old versions doesn’t just swap graphics, it leaps between soundtracks, too. Halo 2 Anniversary’s choir is louder and more punctual, complementing the orchestra at just the right beats.

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Master Chief used to walk around with the grace of a tap dancer...

As part of our studio tour at 343, we visited audio director Paul Lipson’s room to hear some big changes made to the game’s sound effects. He loaded up a mission in Halo 2 Classic, pulled out the energy sword, and waved it through the air. I was caught off guard at the tiny, impotent “whoosh.”

Then he swapped over to Halo 2 Anniversary and did it again. The best phrase I can think of to describe the sound is “electrified glass.” Every swing sliced the air with a dangerous, crackling energy. The tuning fork shape of the weapon matched its high-pitched hum. It looked and felt like a noble weapon worthy of the Covenant Elite.

He switched back and waved the old sword again. I’m reminded of the time my brother and I had a swordfight in the driveway with sticks.

Old plasma grenades explode with little “poofs.” The new ones whine and whistle as the fuse counts down. The silly but beloved “popcorn” SMGs no longer sound like a Jiffy Pop commercial.

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Master Chief used to walk around with the grace of a tap dancer; now his bulky armor shifts and clinks. Weapons now sound different based on where you fire them -- an effect the audio team captured by live-firing weapons at the Tacoma Police Department with 20 microphones set up at different distances.

Individually, these are small changes that you may not notice. Together, these 5,000+ sounds give even the most experienced Halo 2 veteran a reason to stop and take note.

Et tu, Xbox 360?

Halo 4 was the biggest surprise of MCC. As the newest game, it makes sense that it would look the best by default. Through some technical wizardry (and maybe black magic), the game looks like it was developed for the Xbox One all along.

Even in 2012, Halo 4’s environments and enemies looked more synthetic than they did in past Halo games. And by synthetic I don’t mean false or poorly crafted, I mean everything glows.

Enemies pulse, dotted with lights. Liquid stuff in the cracks on the ground glows. When Chief picks up a Promethean weapon, it shifts and constructs itself as if from a blueprint, lighting up as it comes alive. Pulling the trigger lets loose a lance of bright energy. The horsepower of the Xbox One takes Halo 4’s fireworks show and pushes it over the top. Prometheans in particular look better than ever.

And yes, their brutal AI is still fully intact. They’ll dodge shots, teleport into your face, and lob plasma grenades back at you. Halo 4 is not easy.

Halo 3 is the oddball of the collection. Yes, it looks better than it did in 2007, particularly the lighting. But compared to the other three games, the improvements aren’t as noticeable. Grinding down Tsavo Highway on a Brute Chopper is still great, and the story, of course, is as well-told as it ever was, but it clearly hasn’t been given the modernizing touches that the other games have.

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The differences might be more noticeable if you could swap between the old and new versions of Halo 3, but that feature doesn’t apply to the pair of Halos that started on the Xbox 360.

Halo: Combat Evolved’s multiplayer popularized console LAN parties. Halo 2’s head-to-head made Xbox Live what it is today. The worst part about playing a new Halo game was leaving the last game’s multiplayer behind. With MCC, that’s not an issue. The only difficult part is switching between the different games’ sandboxes where jumping, movement, and aiming can feel quite different.

We played tons of multiplayer, and it’s as great as you’d expect. What’s your favorite flavor of Blood Gulch? You like Coagulation? Pop over to Halo 2 and fire up a game of CTF. Feeling some Team Deathmatch on The Pit? Halo 3 is just one menu away. It’s a smorgasbord of maps, and modes, and sandboxes, and all of it – or at least, Halo 3, 4, and the six Halo 2 Anniversary remake maps – can be endlessly tweaked in Forge.

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Yes, six excellent Halo 2 maps got the Anniversary treatment, and they come with more than just graphical updates. For example, the new Ascension, known as “Zenith,” has an added pathway that makes one of the map’s most deadly areas more useable. The spinning central structure can project a massive bubble shield, providing cover from Banshees. The new Lockout, “Lockdown,” adds an escape chute next to the gravity lift exit to get players out of a deadly choke point. Great care was taken to preserve old tricks and jump spots, too, so you can hop in and quickly coax out those old muscle memories.

That Old, Familiar Feeling

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is Halo. I can think of no better way to describe it. It sounds so obvious, but preserving, and yet contributing to, the magic of one of the most beloved and successful game series of all time cannot be easy. From what we’ve seen, 343 nailed it.

There’s a sentiment that Halo is too old-timey to hang with modern shooters. That its floaty, “slow” combat is outclassed by today’s fastest twitch shooters.

First, there’s no need to pick sides. Second, there will always be a place for great shooters with immersive worlds, and respect for the power of intrigue and mystery in storytelling. There’s a place for Halo.

What’s that great quote from the Halo novel? Oh yeah.

“Didn’t you know? Spartans never die.”

BONUS: Interesting Facts About Master Chief Collection

We asked and are awaiting confirmation on whether or not Master Chief Collection will support digital pre-ordering/pre-loading.

Halo 3 and Halo 4 make use of the Xbox One controller's impulse triggers out of the box (we experienced it!), and Halo: CE and Halo 2 may have that functionality added in via a game update shortly after release.

The Scorpion tank still lives in the Coagulation Anniversary remake, but you have to turn it on in Forge (more on all of that later this month).

[Editor's note: 343 has confirmed that you actually can do this!] In classic Halo 2 multiplayer, the Ghost's fuel tank could be shot, causing the Ghost to explode. This is also possible in the Halo 2-emulating Xbox One engine that runs the six Anniversary maps. Aim carefully!

It took a lot of work to make Halo 2 feel right. In fact, "We had to get Havok to recreate aspects of the original physics code used for Halo 2," 343 told us.

Halo: CE Anniversary's Kinect features are not supported in MCC.

[Editor's note: This is corrected from a previous error] Halo: CE's multiplayer maps are the PC versions of the maps due to resolution, but their settings, such as spawn points, are set to make them play exactly as the original Xbox versions (i.e. the Banshee won't be on Blood Gulch).

For those of you who like to start message board wars over such things, let's get this out of the way: Halo 2's campaign isn't quiiiiiiite 1080p. Due to running the original graphics engine and the Xbox One-ified Anniversary graphics engine simultaneously and the original Halo 2 audio engine and remastered Anniversary audio engine simultaneously, Halo 2's campaign does run at 60fps but, resolution-wise, clocks in at 1328x1080. Here's an explanation from 343 executive producer Dan Ayoub: “During development we were really pleased with the way the engine and buffer allowed us to switch instantly between classic and Anniversary engines that are running simultaneously – however that, as you might expect, put a hit on resolution. The campaign of Halo 2: Anniversary looked fantastic at 720p with the level of detail and clarity it gave us, but like every other aspect of the game and tech, we wanted to push it further. So in the last weeks of development, our teams were able to meet a stretch goal and the campaign of Halo 2: Anniversary now runs 60 fps at a crisp resolution of 1328x1080, which is a significant and meaningful boost in image quality we think fans are really going to appreciate. All of the other games across the entire package of The Master Chief Collection run 60 fps at 1920x1080 native.”

All month long, IGN First is diving deep into Halo: The Master Chief Collection. We’ve got map reveals, interviews, features, and plenty more on the way, so check back daily for more!